Forever Young
by nicnac918
Summary: AU. Sugar and spice and everything nice/That's what little girls are made of. But who wants to be a five year old superhero forever?


On June 3rd, 1999 the Powerpuff Girls graduated from Pokey Oaks Kindergarten. There was a small ceremony and the whole class got together for a group picture. The Professor hung his copy of the picture on the wall next to the one of the days the girls were born, and he fondly notes that the girls look very nearly the same in both pictures.

By the end of their first grade year the girls began to suspect that there is something wrong with them. They hadn't grown any taller or really changed at all since the first day they were created as fully formed five year old girls. The Professor reassured them with platitudes like "slow development" and "late bloomers" while he quietly did his own research. It was a year later before he finally got an answer from, oddly enough, a book of nursery rhymes. "Sugar and spice and everything nice/That's what _little_ girls are made of."

The Professor stopped making them go to school after that. Education was important but he couldn't in good conscious force a bunch of five year olds attend third grade, much less middle and eventually high school. Buttercup stayed home all day for weeks after that, but after a month she started attending Pokey Oaks again with Bubbles. The lessons were probably boring to a couple of second grade graduates, but at least they got to play with kids their own maturity level and got naptime every day. Blossom, however, was determined. She had always wanted to go to college and wasn't planning on letting a little thing like not aging stop her. The Professor couldn't remember a time he was more proud of her that the day she graduated from elementary school. But the, one Friday a month after she started sixth grade she came home crying. The following Monday she went to kindergarten with her sisters.

When the girls were (thirty-)five the Professor was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The girls tried their best to stay optimistic, but it was something of a losing proposition. Buttercup was especially lost at the thought that there was something hurting their Professor that she couldn't beat up. When the Professor's condition was bad enough to warrant hospital stays Ms. Keane took the girls in. When the Professor passed away less than a year later she volunteered to take care of them indefinitely. Mr. Mayor, a handsome middle-aged man with dark hair, pitched in by naming the girls "Defenders of Townsville" and putting them on retainer. The girls were wary of the thought of having jobs, but he assured them there wouldn't be any real difference. And aside from the fact Ms. Keane spent less time in the evening pouring over papers and checkbooks and more time reading them bedtime stories and tucking them in, there really wasn't.

When Ms. Keane finally retired the girls quit attending school as well. All the other kids worshipped them as superheroes and their new teacher did little to correct them. Ms. Keane thought it was because the girls were just as tired of kindergarten as she was and none of them bothered to correct her, though Blossom felt guilty about it later.

Nine years later the U.S. Army came to the city of Townsville and destroyed Monster Island. That was how they discovered the extent of the girl's powers and began their quest to have them. Ms. Keane, now an old woman, protested that Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup were just little girls, not soldiers. The army was less than impressed, but cowed to Mrs. Mayor's argument that the girls were needed to protect Townsville from its (few remaining) super villains. They left, but the "for now" hung in the air behind them.

It was only a couple of years after that that Ms. Keane died. Mrs. Mayor considered putting the girls up for adoption, but discounted the idea since Townsville was the only place the girls were safe. Instead the Department of City Defense grew by one position. Officially the post was titled the "Department Head," but it was generally understood the job was the care of three super-powered five year olds. Surprisingly there were quite a few takers, but most of the offers came from people who were more interested in the Powerpuff Girls than Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. Mrs. Mayor did her best to separate the fanatic from the genuinely interested and could only hope her successors would do the same.

The girls did not deal with Ms. Keane's death nearly as well as their new guardian could have hoped, but probably about as well as could be expected. Blossom threw herself into her books; mystery, romance, fantasy, non-fiction, she even picked up the Dictionary once or twice. Buttercup ran away from home. She was back by the next day and yelled at anyone who so much as looked at her for a week straight. But even as the two sisters began to let themselves begin to recover from the loss of the only mother they'd ever known, Bubbles remained inconsolable. When Ms. Keane died it had somehow crystallized for her that she was going to be five forever, and eventually everything that they had ever known or loved would be gone. And for that reason she couldn't stop crying.

Strangely enough, Boomer was the one to finally cheer Bubbles up. That morning their guardian had decided the fresh air would be good for Bubbles and so the day had found her moping in the park. Boomer had spotted her, found the largest and grossest bug in the park and promptly dropped it on her head. Within seconds Blossom and Buttercup were there to defend their sister and Brick and Buster weren't far behind. Bubbles, however, stopped the fight by insisting that Boomer was giving her a gift and had only been trying to cheer her up. All six knew better than to believe something like that, and yet, as the Powerpuff Girls and Rowdyruff Boys stared each other down, none of them contradicted her. All of them there knew why there had been no fight that day, but if asked about it later only Bubbles would have been able to put it to words. Being alone was scary.

After that fateful day the girls and the boys would, on occasion, meet each other in the park. And on those days there were no grand battles to be fought, no people to rescue (or threaten), just fun games and playmates who finally understood. At first their meetings remained a secret, both groups afraid that they would be forbidden from playing with "the enemy." Eventually it came out that Him didn't really care what the boys did in their spare time, as long as they kept up the life of crime on the side, which they did. Various incarnations of the Guardian were upset by it, but most of them didn't care who the girls played with as long as they continued to save the day, which they did. And if the days spent stopping and committing acts of evil grew less as days in the park grew more, it happened gradually enough that no one thought to comment on it.

A new century, the third one the girls would live in, was fast approaching the first time the boys asked them for help. They had found a way to banish Him, meaning the boys would finally be free. The girls hesitated for the barest second. Him was the only super villain left in all of Townsville (the boys didn't count anymore as far as the girls were concerned), the only thing standing between them and the army using them as super soldiers or test subjects. But it was only for a second. The boys were more or less family now, the only thing like family the girls had left aside from each other. And if there was one thing they had learned in a hundred years, it was family comes first. So at the stroke of midnight, just as a new century began, the six supers defeated Him for the final time before flying off into the night. As the city of Townsville disappeared beyond the horizon only Blossom gave the smallest of glances back.

* * *

><p>After the end, six siblings flew over the ruins of a once thriving city. There was little guilt or glee at the sight. All of them had long since stopped trying to protect or hurt people, and had left this city behind long before that. The group split into two, with nary a word or nod to signal it. They had been together long enough that cues like that weren't really necessary anymore. The boys continued forward to the remains of downtown as the girls veered off to what used to be a residential area. Their flight brought them not to the neighborhoods they had been expecting, but to the overgrown remnants of a large park. They made their way to the park's center, where at one time there had stood a rectangular white house, with a red door and three large, circular windows. In its place there was now a statue of three little girls. The statue had crumbled some since it's construction, the tips of bows and end of pigtails long gone, but was still recognizable. Coming in closer the girls examined the tarnished but legible plaque on the statues base.<p>

_Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup_

_November 1998 – December 2099_

_Utonium Park is dedicated to the loving memory of the Powerpuff Girls. Created by Professor Utonium, the girls spent over a century using their superpowers to protect Townsville. They were last seen Dec. 31, 2099 and are presumed to have died defeating Him._

"_Once again the day is saved, thanks to the Powerpuff Girls"_

The boys eventually made their way to the park and found the center following half-remembered streets that were long gone. Upon reaching their destination they found a larger than life statue of their sisters, worshiping them as heroes, as gods. At the statue's base, three little girls lay crying.


End file.
